I mostly agree with the previous commenter who called this post "applause lights." Reading it, many objections come to mind (some of which have already been voiced in other comments):
"Planting seeds" suggests starting a self-perpetuating chain reaction, but the post presents no evidence that any of the proposed methods are effective in this regard.
The post doesn't draw on any existing knowledge in the area of influencing public opinion. For example, to me it seems pretty evident that public opinion normally flows only in one direction, namely down the social hierarchy of status, and any attempt to change it will be successful only insofar as it changes the influential higher-status levels. Otherwise, any success will be temporary and soon drowned. Whether or not you agree with this, any practical proposal for influencing public opinion must assume some such model, and it's crucial not to assume a wrong one.
Similarly, there is no discussion of how to avoid making a negative contribution. For people with less than spectacular communication skills, following some of the advice in the post may result in low-status behaviors that will lower people's opinion o
You can politely ask rationalist questions when someone says something irrational. Don't forget to smile!
You can write letters to the editor of your local newspaper to correct faulty reasoning.
You can visit random blogs, find an error in reasoning, offer a polite correction, and link back to a few relevant Less Wrong posts.
I don't believe these are seeds, such actions don't leave lasting impression that grows under its own power. A lot of energy can be spent in vain correcting specific errors in people who won't take a hint. It might be much more effective to focus on educating people who can actually be expected to make rationality one of the guiding principles in their lives, learning more themselves than an occasional correction by others allows, and some of whom would spend energy propagating the meme.
A textbook on rationality, a rationality seminar, or advertising thereof would be seeds, but probably not arguing with random people who are wrong.
Don't forget to smile!
Or, more generally, to attend to the emotional context of the exchange. (E.g., with some people projecting confusion works better than projecting friendliness.)
In agreement with Vladimir Nesov, these particular 'seeds', though cheap, seem to be not viable at all. I've never seen anyone take one corrected comment and turn it into a tree of rationality. Repeated correction has some effect, but its still more closely analogous to a big pile of seeds on the ground than anything that is self perpetuating. Something like a textbook would probably do better, if you could get them to read it, but that is a fairly tough step for the expected effectiveness (at least if the textbook is geared towards how to do it and not an engineered mind virus).
I've had this idea rolling around in the back of my head to see what an optimized 'rationality seed' would look like, and to see if there are any reasonably effective conversation sized seeds. No magic yet, but here are some thoughts about what it should contain:
To get them to take interest in the idea, it needs to point out some low hanging and easily visible fruit. This is person dependent and non trivial, since you basically have to bust out something important and easily explained that they haven't already heard or thought of. Alternatively, you could point at some easily seen fruit and have them trus
There is an organization at my university called Replant. Every year since 1991, students have participated in a massive campaign to plant trees. Last year, 1400 students were involved.
Like your suggestion of planting the seeds of rationality, this undertaking comes with pitfalls.
I've heard cynical/hilarious stories of Replant groups who go to the same location, several years in a row, dig up the dead trees they planted the year before, and plant new saplings in their place. The (rationalist) lesson here is that there are places where seeds won't grow. Effort would be better spent elsewhere.
Also, as tends to happen with many in-groups, "Replant People" have acquired a reputation for being mildly self-righteous. I can see the same thing happening with rationalists trying to spread the dogma.
So, at the risk of straining the metaphor past the breaking point, planting the seeds of rationality is a great idea as long as you've found a nurturing environment in which to plant them, you can invest energy in guiding their maturation, and you don't come off too smugly.
So, at the risk of straining the metaphor past the breaking point
There is distinguished precedent:
Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow:
And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.
And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth:
But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.
And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.
And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred.
And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Those are inspiring stories, but I can't help thinking that there are more efficient ways to turn barren land into a forest than by planting one seed at a time. Something like this:
Get or make a bunch of crumbled charcoal and manure, and till those into the desolate soil. This will provide some nutrients, reduce leaching, and make the soil more hospitable to the various microbes that are essential in the formation and maintenance of healthy soils.
Plant grasses and clover, to get the soil on its way to recovery. The grass forms extensive root systems, and the clover is a particularly hardy legume, with the ability to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia.
After the soil has been rehabilitated, get a bunch of various seedlings going in a greenhouse somewhere, and plant them.
Once you get the plants well-established, they'll take over the project, and you can relax.
I figure this will be faster, and less labor-intensive, than seed-at-a-time techniques. The various reforestation and de-desertification projects around the world seem to agree.
There's probably a metaphor in here somewhere, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't conflict with what you actually recommend that people do.
You know what, after reading the comments here I was quite convinced that this post wasn't right (what with 'you need a lot of rationality to make a dent, a single link won't do' and all). Then, I looked at the welcome thread. There, you'll see the amount of newcomers that followed a random link and ended up here, then read the sequences.
Also, non-spammy relevant links are great for LW's SEO, bringing in further traffic.
For these two reasons, I think the post, and in particular the suggestion to post links in relevant places around the web is fundamentally sound. A tastefully placed link can change somebody's life!
I don't think this is the most pleasant way to be introduced to rationality, but irrational behavior as a teaching device has worked surprisingly often for me.
Most of the rationalists I know are self taught, and the reason they became interested in avoiding bias and fallacies in the first place is almost universally that they got tired of ridiculous arguments with someone else who was using them and began looking for rules that forced thought processes to stay a bit more sane.
Nobody I know appreciates being shown flaws in their own arguments, but if you ad...
I think that you severely underemphasize the importance of links. As has been pointed out on LW before, you have to acquire a lot of rationality before it really starts to do much for you / starts to reinforce itself over time rather than diminish in the face of external stimuli. Linking back to them is critical so the budding rationalist actually knows where to go to get more rationality instead of quickly forgetting about the incident.
I feel like this post is marginally useful, but mostly functions as an applause light and shouldn't be on the front page.
When I was 12, I, in my infinite wisdom, decided that eugenics was necessary to save humanity, and went online to debate my belief, where I was promptly defeated by a biologist who knew what he was talking about.
It took me a while to admit to being wrong, and I never did so publicly. Instead, I kept trying to patch the holes in my position, even as they were being exposed at an incredible rate.
Nonetheless, I regard this experience as formative in becoming a rationalist. "Planting the seed of rationality" may be successful, but you will often never have the satisfaction of knowing when it works.
Does the record of the debate still exist? For various reasons, I wouldn't spend time advocating eugenics, but I don't think there's much of a biological argument against it.
I made a conceptual jump that I'm not sure this post (or its author) intended, but that left me with a better impression of it than most people seem to be expressing.
I agree that things actions like writing a letter to the editor may have a low rate of return in bringing new persons to the cause, but I believe that they serve very well at making people who are already pro-rational in name more likely to take greater actions at a later date. E.g., I didn't get involved in running the skeptic group at my university until well after I publicly supported skept...
We've had too many "let's do X" posts. I have downvoted this one and will do so for any such in the future. I will upvote posts of the form "I have done X", where X is a valuable thing to do.
You can politely ask rationalist questions when someone says something irrational.
Has this ever worked for you? It never has for me.
It's not that people change their position during the conversation. It's that a few of them realize later that they didn't have a good reply, and they think about it.
It's hard to measure this, but it has happened to me many times, and I like to generalize from one example.
I am trying to do this for my best friend right now...under the pretext of 'helping her to control her emotions better.' Searching through LessWrong to find helpful posts...
I think, an interesting question in this context is whether rationalism is actually growing or not; today we may have more freedom to be rational (after all, some of of the smartest people of previous ages were quite irrational), but are we, as a species, actually getting better at this? It seems that common knowledge (say, that the earth revolves around the sun) has been dramatically improving, but rationalism itself? A good second question would be what would be a good, operational way to measure this...
I have a glimmer that humor can work well in this capacity.
For instance, jokes about pathological reasoning can induce the listener to consider why certain chains of logic are (horrifically) invalid (and thus humorous), and perhaps apply these lessons to their own reasoning.
(There is also the related but less pleasant phenomenon in which the listener immediately recognizes one of their own flaws as the butt of the joke (as embodied in an abstract joke-land entity as opposed to themselves), laughs in embarrassment, and decides to alter their behavior (or ...
One person planting seeds of rationality can make a difference, and we can do even better if we organize. This is not obvious, why would organizing be a net benefit? It can also introduce much overhead.
The use of this poem contributes quite a bit to the argument as it is a factual event and a future possible event.
It is a positive action to do something that will be beneficial within ones own lifetime, and also to repeat something that has been done in the past that is a current benefit.
Planting trees has the benefit of carbon sequestration and the added benefit of providing growth of known positive environmental factors such as increased biodiversity.
The negative aspect of this post is that the wording is similar to religious propaganda such as used by World Vision.
After his wife died, Elzéard Bouffier decided to cultivate a forest in a desolate, treeless valley. He built small dams along the side of the nearby mountain, thus creating new streams that ran down into the valley. Then, he planted one seed at a time.
After four decades of steady work, the valley throbbed with life. You could hear the buzzing of bees and the tweeting of birds. Thousands of people moved to the valley to enjoy nature at its finest. The government assumed the regrowth was a strange natural phenomenon, and the valley's inhabitants were unaware that their happiness was due to the selfless deeds of one man.
This is The Man Who Planted Trees, a popular inspirational tale.
But it's not just a tale. Abdul Kareem cultivated a forest on a once-desolate stretch of 32 acres along India's West Coast, planting one seed at a time. It took him only twenty years.
Like trees in the ground, rationality does not grow in the mind overnight. Cultivating rationality requires care and persistence, and there are many obstacles. You probably won't bring someone from average (ir)rationality to technical rationality in a fortnight. But you can plant seeds.
You can politely ask rationalist questions when someone says something irrational. Don't forget to smile!
You can write letters to the editor of your local newspaper to correct faulty reasoning.
You can visit random blogs, find an error in reasoning, offer a polite correction, and link back to a few relevant Less Wrong posts.
One person planting seeds of rationality can make a difference, and we can do even better if we organize. An organization called Trees for the Future has helped thousands of families in thousands of villages to plant more than 50 million trees around the world. And when it comes to rationality, we can plant more seeds if we, for example, support the spread of critical thinking classes in schools.
Do you want to collaborate with others to help spread rationality on a mass scale?
You don't even need to figure out how to do it. Just contact leaders who already know what to do, and volunteer your time and energy.
Email the Foundation for Critical Thinking and say, "How can I help?" Email Louie Helm and sign up for the Singularity Institute Volunteer Network.
Change does not happen when people gather to talk about how much they suffer from akrasia. Change happens when lots of individuals organize to make change happen.